The Natchez Trace Parkway is 444 Miles Long, Right?

Nope. It isn’t. And that’s despite the National Park Service’s claim that 444 miles/714.5 kilometers is the “official length” of the Trace. In actuality, the Natchez Trace is 445.1 miles/716.3 kilometers long. Not to sound paranoid, but the government is not telling the truth here.

Maybe it’s because the last two sections of the Trace- the final eight miles or so to the Southern Terminus (“ST”) at Liberty Road in Natchez and the 14.3 miles/23 kilometers around the northwest quadrant of Jackson, Mississippi- were built many years after the majority of the remainder of the NTP, but there is a significant discrepancy between the official mile markers, which are supposed to reflect the actual distance measured from the ST to any given point along the Trace, and the true actual distance to any given point. How do I know the “actual” distance? By creating a GPX track based on Google Maps’ satellite view images of the NTP starting at the centerpoint of the bridge over Liberty Road, which I use as the ST, and ending at the centerpoint of the bridge over Tennessee State Route 100 near Nashville, which is the Northern Terminus (“NT), that’s how. This generates, when imported into a mapping program that calculates distance- I use Ride with GPS- a distance of 445 miles/716 kilometers (and, as noted above, a tiny bit of mileage “change,” but that doesn’t affect any of the distance measurements in between).

Now, before you say that the GPX track that was originally created just runs along wherever the program used “thinks” the centerline of the roadway is and this can be (and often, in my experience is) pretty inaccurate, let me tell you that I spent the better part of three work days placing the track right on the centerline as shown by the aerial image displayed in Google Maps, correcting by hand as I went along. I will acknowledge that this might have possibly introduced some error as to the total length of the track, but assert, after many years of creating route maps and associated data, that this would be at most a couple of tenths of a mile/kilometer over the entire length of the Trace. So I’m sure that you’re now wondering, “How actually bad is this discrepancy?” I mean, if I’m making a big deal out of a mile or so, does it really matter? Well, it is worse than just a mile difference (as if that isn’t bad enough to offend my cartographer’s eye), and I do think that it makes things pretty frustrating for folks who do things like prepare and use cue sheets based on GPX tracks, or go by mileage between points taken from a cycle computer. I like to preplan my trips with a pretty concrete idea of what my daily mileage is going to be, and an issue like this makes it just about impossible to get those figures easily. Now, also as noted above, the National Park Service in its literature describing the NTP says that it is 444 miles/714.5 kilometers in length. I’ve come up with just a tiny bit over 445 miles/716 kilometers. Again, then- what’s the problem? Well, bluntly put, the Park Service is pulling your leg with that number. Here’s why: The yellow star in the following photo diagram is the exact location of NTP milepost 442.

I have ridden my bicycle past this milepost as recently as Wednesday of this week, but if you want to verify where it is for yourself if you don’t believe me it is easily visible on the Google maps “street view.” From there headed to the red star at the center of the Tennessee State Route 100 bridge the distance is three-tenths of a mile/one-half a kilometer. Even if you include the additional distance around the longest northbound exit ramp (to westbound Route 100, you only come up with a total of seven-tenths of a mile/1.1 kilometers. It is thus, based on the location of Milepost 442, impossible to travel 444 miles on the Natchez Trace, much less 445 miles. Others have also spotted this problem [link].

But what about the other end, you might ask? Wouldn’t it be possible to find the additional mileage there just in case I located the Southern Terminus in the wrong place?

Well, woo hoo! A whole one-tenth of a mile/160 meters. So nope, it’s not there. There might be a little bit better case for adding in that tenth of a mile, but I need to draw my line from somewhere to somewhere, and I just don’t see a reason to include entrance/exit ramps. So that’s why I plotted my centerline distance that became my GPX track from the middle of the Liberty Road Bridge to the middle of the Tennessee Route 100 Bridge. But it gets worse than the Park Service pretending that the NTP is 444 miles long when, using its own measurements and mileposts, it can not possibly be any longer than, at the most (in other words, including the ramps), 442.8 miles/712.6 kilometers. By my measurement using the GPX track I created from the centerline shown on the aerial imagery, Milepost 442 is just a little less than 444.8 miles/715.8 kilometers from the Southern Terminus. That’s a difference of 2.8 miles/4.5 kilometers. This makes me think that the Park Service is aware of the discrepancy and pulled the “444 mile” distance out of thin air (uh-huh, thin air, that’s the ticket) as a way to cover itself just a little in reducing the gap.

But maybe the Milepost 442 post is just mistakenly located. Well, that doesn’t fly. either. Here’s a chart showing the Trace mileposts at 100 mile intervals along with the actual mileage to each from the Southern Terminus.

I have looked at every mileage number that the NPS has published for various locations along the Trace and compared them with the actual location plotted on the GPX track.

As you can see, the discrepancy increases fairly consistently as you head north. The NTP mileposts and published mileage numbers, in short, are not correct. None of them. And that’s a fact.

So what does this all mean in the overall scheme of things? Does it make everything confusing? Will I wind up missing seeing stuff because of the discrepancy? No, almost certainly not. When I figure distances and use my Ride with GPS app while I ride, I’ll use the “correct” mileage that the GPX track gives me. When I post here, though, unless the difference is somehow significant to that situation in particular I’ll use the NTP milepost mileage. Trust me, unlike the government I’ll keep you on track.

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One thought on “The Natchez Trace Parkway is 444 Miles Long, Right?”

My experience with trails is similar. It’s the trail crews who notice the details. The Park Service is so underfunded they are just trying to keep the overhang from hiding the signs. Interesting study. Sounds like you could litigate it before the Superintendent. Be safe. It’s 26 now in Collinswood. I biked in Korea during the Winter. I can tell you a month of 9 degrees is no joke but anything in even the 20s is a real problem. Overnights are difficult without heavier equipment. Your Pics are beautiful. Hang in there. It’s the South. 80 degree days not far off.